October, 31, 2025 - 07:12 - Interior of Horga island
Riley’s POV:
The place was mind boggling, how can something like that be in such a place it definitely don’t belongin this world? Anyway my team already vacated the area after finding the radiation level there was much higher than the acceptable amountour suits can allow.
We can’t go in without proper equipments so we marked the area and went immediately towards their mission for theday, finding Mem and her village.
The area was not that far about four kilometers away if we walk straight and cut through the jungle whichwas a very bad idea but the fastest way since if we follow the beach it would be about eight kilometers which was double the length.
We allagreed to go for the jungle since we do have a secondary objective which was to take pictures of the flora and fauna in this place.
This jungle is something similar to earth yet it was clearly not. It was so gloomy and dark, waaay darker than any jungles I’ve been to, backin earth. the sunlight barely passed through the canopy yet the groundfloor was so densely packed with vegetation.
These plants probablyadapted really great in low light condition. Some plants had bluish leaves that had red cherry-like fruits as large as a dime, I was tempted tograb a bite but I was kinda hesitant.
A few seconds of contemplating my choices, I gave in to temptation, I know, I know, this was obviously a dumb idea and certainly one of my not so bright ideas in my think tank. So I plucked one, I rubbed it on my wrist, no reaction of any kindno pain, no rashes. I smelled it and oh boy it smelled so wonderful, it’s like a mix of wild orchids and the faint smell of pomegranate.
I rubbed it on my lips for a bit, as I half expected, no reaction at all. So if this turns out poisonous, I just hope the words of those tech geekback in the base holds truth that the nanites in my body would stop and neutralize any toxins inflicted in my body.
“Damn, For the glory of the food pioneers, here goes nothing.” I popped the berry in my mouth. I almost fainted when I tasted the strange berry, it was so wonderful! It’s like I ate heaven and I kept chewing the good stuff, I couldn’t even describe the sweet savory taste, it had a faint taste of citrus and berries and yet the flavors doesn’t compete with each other, this berry or whateva this is, this is the pure example of harmony! Now that I had taste tested it, I plucked all the berries I could and stuffed it in a plastic bag and was placed inside my old 50 cal ammo box among the original occupants, M&M’s, skittles and other chocolate goodies. The box was with me for a very long time and
it was special to me, and no I won’t share the history of why I’m keeping it, anyway moving on.
Fifteen minutes into the jungle, we could hear the chirps of birds, it was something I never heard of in my life, the tune was mesmerizing but kinda melancholic to my opinion.
When I looked up I saw a glimpse of a bright colored purple bird high up in the trees about a hundred feet up, I raised my M14 and lookedthrough the scope, I was surprised when I saw the bird because it looked like a pigeon but had the body similar to an eagle and with thecolor of a parrot and well, I saw them and actually its not one but two who was busy, let’s just say doing their best to preserve their specie, what the? melancholic my ass! It’s their horny noise! I ignored what I saw but obviously all of it was recorded inside my helmet.
We saw a lot of different insects and gladly, no giant beetles, one time we crossed path with a snake-like animal with wings! Big ass bat-likewings! It spooked the shit out of us when it flew on our faces, luckily it wasn’t interested on us but rather on the rodent-like animals that had burrows in the ground. forty minutes into our tedious walk, we are now cutting through the thick vegetation harder than ever but wasn’t so hard when you have a nasty ass machete as sharp as any blade of the highest quality, I was glad with the tech that we had, we can practically wander around in this green maze without getting lost. Ahead was a small ridge, nothing to worry about…… or not.
As we reached the small ridge that was the time the lively jungle went eerily quiet. I held my hand up signaling everyone to stop.
“Hold up, something’s off in this place.” I said.
“Everything’s off in this place, I give you that.” Srgt. Adam said as he glanced at his back.
Everyone was on high alert. We activated our scans and found life signs above us. We thought it was some random birds but upon closerlook with the help of our scanner, it’s pretty obvious what the hell the creatures was. Well camouflaged by the canopy, our scans reveal anoutline of some massive spiders which were almost invisible from our point of view. They seems to be watching us, I got a bad feeling about it, well all of us in fact.
“Johan, Evan, deploy the drones, one is to scout ahead of us, second was to take a closer look at those bastards watching us.
They immediately complied and deployed the drones without fail, the rest of us watched each other’s backs. Our hunch was right,something was definitely off about it as the report of Johan revealed everything. Bellow the ridge was a span of webs that covered the area, we could see in the video feed that there are many poor sods that fell victims to the spiders, skeletons of dried up people and unknown creatures were cocooned by the trees, webs with a nest-like structure in the middle were hanging from the trees.
The second video feed revealed the entirety of the spiders, they tried to attack the drone but Evan was fast and immediately got the drone away from the attack.
We were surprised when we saw the spiders not because of its monstrous size but the fact that they were using camouflage to the extent that
was unbelievable among animals back on earth some animals do use tools like chimps and other primates but not as complex as this, sure octopus, cuttlefish, chameleon and such animals can blend in using their own adaptive traits but this one took it on another level.
These fuckers were using leaves, tree barks and branches as camo which was held together by their own web.
“These son of a bitches are intelligent I give them that!” I said.
“These guys Definitely know their game, their tactic was probably to drive us into their webs and back us into their sticky wall and attack us when we have nowhere to go.” I said with a chuckle, informing everyone, they were a bit anxious, being sucked dry isn’t one of our death wishes.
“Okay, Men! We’ll play their game, but too bad they picked the wrong guys to mess with! Hans! Bring ze flammenwerfer. We’ll kill these fuckers with FIRE!”
“My name is Hansel, Leutenant! Also your cheap German acccent was godawful!” Hansel said at me while shaking his head. He was the youngest among us so we tend to tease him a bit.
“And what do you know?” I said, as I was teasing him more.
“My girlfriend was half German and practically grew up in Germany cuz her father was the ceo of some famous car company….oh cmon why
the fuck am I telling you guys sheesh, you know Lieutenant, back in base when we were being briefed, I got that prickly feeling when you
saw the flamethrower and grinned at me, your sense of humor is whacked.” Hansel said, he was already done with the safety check of the flamethrower and was waiting for the order.
“Tell us about it later kid. Also I am retired so Lieutenant is out of the formalities” I winked at him. He flipped me the bird and I grinned at him. The fuckers were just sitting on the canopy and was patiently watching us, it seems I was right, they won’t make a move unless we are near the trap.
“So once they start descending from the canopy, we’ll light them up, let’s see how these bastards holds up in our firepower, We’ll split in half, they will provide cover for Hansel and the drone operators and our rear guard in case they do something funny and pincer us, while the rest of us will take defensive position and assault the spiders.”
We started to head for the ridges and lo and behold the spiders started to go down from the canopy using their threads as a bungee cable,
once they’re near the ground they detached their strings and walked on the ground. I immediately ordered the attack. The spiders seems
surprised when we were not running and they paused for a bit, but quickly tried to rush and attack us. In their mind, they probably thought we froze in terror in short they underestimated us.
Several gunshots broke the silent jungle. The echo of the gunshot can be heard from a few kilometers, scaring the native birds away.
Our guns roared as we tore through the spiders armor, they’re a bit tough but the power of the 7.62 round proved its worth.
We slowly retreated towards the ridge where the web traps were set, Hansel was already doing his job, to burn everything in the webs and clear a pathway for us while being covered by the rest of the unit
.
About 20 spiders descended and twelve were left alive from our assault. They were panicking which exposed their weakness - they became
disorganized, their tactics failed and their mind probably slammed shut, they probably never encountered “prey” like us that uses ranged
attack that could tear through their armor, most of their old long dead prey uses close combat which made them careless. I decided to bring
out the minigun to make things goes faster. The barrel spun and spat countless bullets, I did not indiscriminately fire and spray everywhere like a drunk guy taking a piss, instead I opted to conserve ammo.
Every 3-5 second burst was a dead spider so the whole engagement did not last for two minutes. All the spiders were dead or dying, the ground was littered with gross dark purple slime and spider flesh, we could even hear the grinding and chirping sound of the dying spiders, “Can spiders even make a sound like that? Oh well we’re in another world.”
to be honest its really creepy looking at them while making those sound so to ease their pain they were given our kindest gesture, a bullet or two to the head.
The weird part was that the spider eyes loose “glow” when they die, like those sci-fi films where robots shuts down and the faint glow in their eyes fade.
We inspected the dead bodies and collected samples and was stored in small canisters for the lab to analyze.
After securing the area and making sure that there was no threat in the vicinity, we stopped for a bit to replenish our ammunition inside the empty magazines.
I took the liberty to free up my load and took out a pack of kit-kat and the plastic full of the wonder berry and put it snugly in one of my ammo pouch. I munched on my snacks and the rest of the team looked at me strangely.
“What are you looking at?” I said.
“Nope nothing, besides the fact that you can enjoy your food beside that pile of stinky gore a few inches away from your feet and the rancid smell from the dead bodies around us.”
“Heh, I can eat whenever and wherever I want so why not, I need all the nutrients I can.” upon saying this, some took out a few stuffs from their ration, pizza, chocolate bars and other stuffs commonly found in the basic MRE packs and started eating, of course its only snacks not the full meal. A few didn’t eat but rather took out packs of cigarettes. They removed their helmets and proceeded to smoke, they probably wanna keep the nasty lingering smell from defiling the sweet floral scent of the helmet’s interior. I was tempted, and it’s been a while since I had a smoke so I asked for one and they gave me. Ah, this taste sure is wonderful.
After a short break, we resume to our treck, our sensors warned us that they picked up a few heat signatures from our north-east about fifty-five yards. We immediately assumed battle position and took cover as we waited for the unknown as my men deployed their drones. (note that when they detected the spiders, they only saw vital signs and not much heat signature, which they mistook as birds.)
“What was that noise? Its near, come on Yvend, follow me, I want to find out what it was.” A woman said as she tucked her basket full of brown and red colored mushrooms inside a wooden backpack. She gripped firmly her makeshift spear with a finely crafted obsidian spear tip and took off inside the jungle.
“No Elya! It’s too dangerous! That’s the direction of the araknes nests! Listen to me!” Yvend also tucked her basket full of wild herbs. While the curiosity had gotten the best of her sister, Yvend prioritized in securing her sister and keep her from harms way so she ran as fast as she could and catch up with her sister. She managed to grab her arm and pulled her away and said.
“Listen Elya! Father warned us not to go in there, that’s the direction of the araknes nest! Listen to me, only the hunters are allowed in there!”
“I know Sister, I just want to see whats going on in there. Please.”
At this point the continuous noise died down, only a couple of loud sound can be heard in the distance.
“Okay, we will go in there but not near the nest! If we see something out of ordinary we will ran as fast back to the village and warn everyone of what we will see, understood? We’ll go slow.” She took out something that was covered in cloth, she removed the strings and revealed a beautiful obsidian dagger. Now armed, they walked for a couple of minutes until they found themselves in the thickest part of the area, in the distance they could see smoke and the smoldering ash of what’s used to be the nest, as they walked closer they could sense that someone or something is watching them but couldn’t see anyone around when suddenly someone said.
“Stop right there.” even if they did not understand the language, they immediately knew it was a person’s voice.
At this point, Elya and Yven were baffled and froze stiff, they looked around, clutching their weapons, they were scared when suddenly a figure emerged from the bush who was holding a black stick on his right arm while he raised his left arm, dressed in strange green clothes with different pattern, it had a strange triangular head with no eyes.
“Who are you?” the figure said.
In the seas, 4 kilometers west of Horga island
A small wooden ship had been sailing towards the cursed island, paid handsomely by a rich noble of an unknown country to dispose off of his competitors in politics, they are secretly in service of said country as a smuggling ship that smuggling slaves to illegal substances or weapons.
“Captain, We are near the rocky barrier of the cursed island” A man dressed in dirty ragged clothes whom was obviously haven’t bath for god knows how long had it been, said as he opened the door of the captain’s cabin.
“I see tell the men to prepare to drop the garbage.” The captain said. He came out of his cabin, Dressed in dirty white shirt stained by his sweat with a bushy beard and a cavity filled mouth for a smile, went towards the interior of his ship where fifteen people were bound in chains, starved and severely malnourished one couldn’t guess that they were still alive. The crew of the ship had taken them outside, it may have been weeks since they saw the daylight and their eyes had a hard time adjusting to the brightness. The lined up prisoners were crying and pleading not to drop them off the cursed island but the crew seems to be deaf and did their work while humming and and then they removed their shackles the prisoners were surprised.
“I am not as dishonorable as my employer, and as such proof I will remove your bound and gag, off you go!” after letting out a nasty maniacal laugh he pushed the prisoners overboard one by one.
After a while when they were preparing to sail back, the captain noticed something was off, he realized that the eternal fog that seems to be hiding the island was now gone and he could clearly see the island itself. Then it hits him, he chuckled to himself, “Wouldn’t my new king be delighted if the vast treasure hidden in that place was up for the picking? My fame will rise if I manage to convince the king!”
“Men! We sail straight to the port city of Ronox!”
Well They're gonna freak out when a Montana-class shows up.